Elizabeth Abbott > Quotes

“Sugar historian Noel Deerr estimates that per capita sugar consumption was four pounds in 1700, eight pounds by 1729, twelve by 1789, the year of the French Revolution, and eighteen pounds by 1809.”
― Elizabeth Abbott, Sugar: A Bittersweet History

“(At the same time, African-American males, many of them slaves, had an estimated life expectancy of twenty-three years, 40 percent lower than for whites.)”
― Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Marriage

“Tea, on the other hand, stimulated, refreshed and, heavily sugared, delivered much-needed calories to the undernourished working class. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, improved water supplies and falling prices made tea Britain’s most popular beverage. Sugar had much to do with propelling it there. As British historian D. J. Oddy notes, “The principal change from the late eighteenth century was the growing use of sugar. By the mid-nineteenth century sugar consumption had reached half a pound (0.2 kg) per head per week.”90 That’s a fair amount of sugar, and over the decades it would increase until, by the end of the century, weekly per capita consumption exceeded one pound.91 But”
― Elizabeth Abbott, Sugar: A Bittersweet History

“Sugar as consolation—the ultimate comfort food—gave it a psychological dimension that transcended taste and caloric force. The wage-earning worker’s ability to buy this previously unattainable luxury connected the “will to work and the will to consume.”
― Elizabeth Abbott, Sugar: A Bittersweet History